Misfire

Military historian Hallahan describes how, from the Revolutionary War to the present, the U.S. Army has resisted adopting appropriate and much-needed small arms. This unhappy situation is typified in his account of President Lincoln's struggle to introduce the breech-loading rifle into the Union Army despite the obstructionist tactics of his powerful chief of ordnance. The most interesting chapters deal with three armorers of genius and their campaigns to convince the Army to adopt their inventions: Hiram Maxim and his mechanically operated machine gun, John Browning and his gas-operated small arms and John Garand and his semiautomatic M1 rifle (which General Patton called the greatest battle implement ever devised). Hallahan reveals that on the eve of almost every U.S. war, the nation's armory has been so ill-prepared that no rifles were available to our troops, and he wonders if we will be caught once again in a major war with the wrong rifle, i.e., the M16A2. Arguing that superior firepower, not the best-aimed weapon, wins battles, he fears that the Army has double-crossed itself again by restricting the automatic fire of that weapon to a three-round burst. This authoritative history of Army Ordnance's bureaucratic self-sabotage should be of wide interest. Photos. (Oct.)